Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD 4.09 Broken Promises Recap Review

Daisy and Mace work on their trust, Sen. Nadeer welcomes her brother home, and the robot-murder-apocalypse has begun.

Quake has quickly moved from being a known terrorist to becoming the most famous SHIELD agent after Mace spun a publicity story about her being undercover. But while America loves her, Mace and Daisy, and the entire SHIELD team, need to rebuild their trust if they’re going to move forward, and Mace knows where to start. After sending Simmons to assist Sen. Nadeer with a terrigenesis cocoon, she is able to identify the new Inhuman as Vijay Nadeer, the Senator’s brother. With Daisy suspecting her ties to the Watchdogs, Mace takes her and Simmons to try and rescue their fellow Inhuman.

But so far Vijay is comfortable in their families retreat, and Sen. Nadeer, Ellen, seems to just be glad to have her brother back. After reminiscing about their childhood spent there, they move onto more serious matters, such as Loki’s Chitauri invasion of New York, the Incident, that took their mother from them. From that day the Nadeer siblings have stood strong together against this new alien threat. But after his terrigenesis, Vijay is that threat, and Ellen sends for her Watchdog goons to take care of him. Mace and Daisy arrive just in time for the Watchdogs’ attack on Vijay and to witness his inhuman reflexes. They ask Vijay to go with them back to SHIELD HQ where they can help him, but his trust in his sister is still strong and chooses to go with her. As Ellen and Vijay escape via her helicopter, she puts a bullet into his gut.

Coulson and the rest of SHIELD have their own problems when they attempt to wipe Aida’s hard drive for fear of any lingering affects from her use the Darkhold. She quickly retaliates to save her life, infiltrating the base physically and digitally, sending SHIELD into lockdown. Fittz and Radcliffe work to get her out of the system while Coulson and May confront AIda, who makes short work of them, knocking Coulson unconscious, and revealing May to be another LMD, who she’ll use to her advantage. With the LMD May already having Coulson’s trust, she is able to discover the location of the Darkhold for Aida, who quickly steals it. She’s nearly out of the door when Fittz manages to flush her from the system, and Mack decapitates the killer robot with his shotgun axe.

While “Broken Promises” kept the action upbeat and entertaining with Mack and Yo-Yo’s back and forth about killer robot movies, the Nadeers’ story hits a point that is very relevant; this overwhelming and national fear of “otherness.” While they have suffered tragedy at the hands of aliens, Sen. Nadeer’s fear has manifested into violence and hatred for anything extraterrestrial. She sees Inhumans as a plague, changing humans into monstrous aliens, infecting them, and now her own brother. When in actuality, Inhumans are still the humans they were before their terrigenesis, but simply their own potential unlocked within them. But does the world know how Inhumanity works? As the Inhuman gene works through families and bloodlines, if Vijay is Inhuman, wouldn’t that make Sen. Nadeer Inhuman as well? While this second half of the season seems to reveal a new threat in the Radcliffe’s LMD’s, will Sen. Nadeer and her possible Inhumanity play some role going forward, breaking her alliance with the Inhuman hate group, the Watchdogs?